This was the birth of commercialized processed cheese.
This likely is due to the fact that patents are, of course, public and whatever Kraft added to the mix, he probably wanted to keep it a secret from the competition, a fairly common practice in the food industry. The patent never mentions the addition of a sodium additive or “emulsifiers” (be it sodium citrate like the Swiss or a more general sodium phosphate). It goes on to explain the process of slicing, heating, and stirring cheddar cheese in great detail, how it needed to be heated to 175 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes while being whisked continuously. It is unclear if Kraft knew of these Swiss gentlemen, but, in 1916, he submitted for US Patent 1186524, which was titled “ Process of sterilizing cheese and an improved product produced by such process.” In it, it describes a way, “to convert cheese of the Cheddar genus into such condition that it may be kept indefinitely without spoiling, under conditions which would ordinarily cause it to spoil, and to accomplish this result without substantially impairing the taste of the cheese.” Their experiments included shredding, heating the cheese up to various temperatures, and mixing it with sodium citrate (still used as a food additive today) to produce a “homogenous product which firmed upon cooling.” Walter Gerber and Fritz Stettler of Switzerland in 1911 experimented with their native Emmentaler cheese to see if they could increase the shelf life of cheese for export purposes. While Kraft was the first to receive a US patent for processed cheese, he wasn’t the first to invent it. The next year, in 1915, they changed the cheese game. That same year, they opened their first cheese factory in Stockton, Illinois.
Within five years, Kraft’s business was successful enough that four of his brothers from Canada were able to come to Chicago and help James build his new cheese company. His reasoning was that he was doing the hard part for them- finding and buying the cheese and then bringing it directly to the shop owners- and that was worth the markup. He would then sell it to the shop owners around town at marked up prices. For the next few months before dawn every day, he would take Paddy and the carriage down to the wholesale market on Chicago’s Water Street and buy blocks of cheese in bulk. Using his meager remaining funds, he bought a horse (named Paddy) and a carriage.
Either way, Kraft was left stranded in Chicago, reportedly with little money (perhaps lending credence to the “went under” theory) and no job. After moving to Chicago, the company either went under or the heads of the company pushed Kraft out (records are conflicting as to what exactly happened there). He quickly rose up through the company and was invited to move to Chicago to run the cheese company’s branch there. But most important to this story, while there, he eventually invested in a small cheese company. In fact, there seems to be no real record at all of why Kraft went to Buffalo. Why he chose Buffalo (well over two hundred miles from his home in Ontario) over Detroit (under fifty miles away from Stevenson) isn’t known. (Where a little over a half century later another common Super Bowl snack, the Buffalo Wing, was born. When he was 28 years old, he immigrated to the United States, where he first chose Buffalo, New York to settle in. Kraft was born in 1874 in Stevensville, Ontario on a dairy farm. But what is Cheez Whiz? Why did get it invented? And is there really cheese in Cheez Whiz? asks: Is there any real cheese in cheese whiz?Īs America gets ready for their upcoming Super Bowl parties (or Royal Rumble party, if that’s your thing), Cheez Whiz – the yellowish-orange, gooey, bland tasting “cheese” product – will surely make an appearance at some of them.
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